Office Of The Mayor
Thomas M. McMahon


Mayor’s Report To City Council
December 19th, 2005

McMahon Plan for Reading

This administration will continue to address issues coming to the forefront of my attention in terms of the four major tenets of the McMahon Plan. The major elements of the plan are:

1. Crime and Public Safety issues
2. Economic Development
3. Building neighborhoods
4. City Finances

Crime and Public Safety

1) Chief Broad, Councilwoman Goodman-Hinnerschitz and I have met with some of the neighbors in Southeast Reading about several burglaries in that area which have occurred over the past two months. Special details of undercover officers have been assigned; we have some leads but I want to ask every citizen to be aware of the activity, and to report any suspicious activity to our police department. This is true of any part of the city, but especially in the southeast area. You can check the crime activity of any part of the city by using the city web site on the crime mapping software. It is updated twice daily.

2) Traffic details have been monitoring the situation around the Glenside School in the mornings and afternoon during the construction of the bridge. Additional spot details are checking on the parking and street crossing issues at this time in an attempt to educate the offenders either with warnings of citations.

3) Vice and the administration have met with neighbors of some nuisance bars in the city to identify actions that can be taken to maintain quality of life in the areas. We have been assisted by the Liquor Enforcement arm of the Pennsylvania State Police.

4) The first meeting of the Statewide Latino Coalition settlement advisory committee met last week and the Chief and I were in attendance. The seven member board is off to a good start in understanding hiring practices and will come forth with recommendations in the first half of 2006.

5) Reminder that the Citizens Police Academy will be starting a new series of classes in the Spring. Contact the Chiefs office for more information and an application.

Economic Development

1) The official opening of the new Sovereign Plaza took place last week. Team members of Sovereign are starting to move in and at full occupancy over the next two months; we will have about 540 additional workers in the downtown area. It is another example of good corporate citizenship on the part of Sovereign Bank and I especially want to thank Jay Sidhu, their CEO, along with Albert Boscov of Our City Reading, Adam Mukerji of our Community Development office, Architect Lee Olsen and the Burkey Construction Company for their fine work in achieving this goal.

2) I am pleased to announce that we now have a total of $2.1 M allocated to the extension of River Road up to Opportunity Blvd through grants by Senator Santorum of $400,000; Congressman Gerlach of $1.2M, and Congressman Pitts of $500,000. Work is expected to begin in late spring on this road which will be helpful in taking care of a major part of the traffic to the Big Spring project.

3) Buttonwood Gateway site acquisition continues with the support of the county and Our City Reading. The area is now being marketing nationally by the Berks Economic Partnership. We are looking now at a mixed use industrial and residential component for the site.

4) I want to thank Commerce Bank for their contribution of $10,000 for scholarships for the Second Street Learning Center at Opportunity House and Emmas Place.

5) The Goggle Works Arts Center at 2nd and Washington St has celebrated three months of operations and results have exceeded expectations. The film theatre is especially successful. Winter classes are now being signed up and are almost full in many of them. Call 610-374-4600 for more details or stop by anytime. The artists will soon be taking their art into the schools starting with a regular schedule at Lauers Park.

6) There is much interest in other development projects in the vicinity of the Goggle Works and I will report on that over the next few months.

7) We continue to meet monthly with various development organizations. The Initiative for a Competitive Greater Reading, the Berks Economic Partnership, Riverplace Development Corporation and others are all working together to bring jobs into the city.

Neighborhoods

1) Neighborhoods are an important part of our strategy of maintaining quality of life in the city. Groups are less active over the winter, but Reading Beautification is working now to line up projects for the spring.

2) Our public works department will begin thinning out some of the trees in front of the Pagoda in preparation for further enhancement of the Pagoda experience. We hope to have a fully functioning coffee shop and gift shop in operation by the spring and the view will be greatly enhanced by taking down some of the invasive specials of scrub trees that have grown up in front of the Pagoda.

3) Street trees will be maintained more actively with the new budget that council passed. The average cost per homeowner will be an additional $5 per year, but we expect to be able to leverage that amount by at least double to begin to do a better job of maintaining the urban forest. Better tree care, in coordination with better street lighting, vastly improves the safety of an area.

4) Beginning in 2006 the new complement of codes officers, being trained on a strategic plan for addressing vacant and problem properties developed jointly by our codes manager, Mr Jatinder Khokhar with the assistance of our Managing Director Mr. Churchill, will begin to make a major impact on the housing stock in the city.

5) Housing programs available through the city, county and state organizations will be identified and promoted through the new city web site that will be in operation by Feb 1, 2006. A new webmaster is expected to be hired within the next two weeks who will accelerate this process.

6) I attended a lunch last week in Lancaster for the Blueprint Communities training effort through the Federal Home Loan bank which is promoting its services for housing and economic development. Thanks to all the participants who have met and continue to meet at Tyson Schoener School with the neighbors.

Finance

The 2006 annual budget has been approved and adopted. This year’s General Fund Budget is balanced but has increased by more than 9%. Both Council and Administration will have to look at addressing the operational deficit in the City’s budget. This will include very difficult decisions over the next 12 to 24 months including reductions in spending and increases to tax revenues for the coming years.

1) The City has set up lines of credit as a financing vehicle to pursue its Capital Improvement Plan for 2006, 2007, and 2008. The City will be using the lines of credit as needed to fund the CIP.

2) In 2009 the City will issue $25,000,000 in bonds. The proceeds from the bonds will be used to pay off the lines of credit and all capitalized interest. The remaining bond proceeds will be used to fund capital projects in 2009.

3) Working with its financial consultant, the administration was able to find a creative solution to help balance the 2006 budget. By locking in a fixed rate for the 2009 bonds the City was able to receive 2.87 million in forward bond swap proceeds.

Public Works

1) We completed the summer months (by DEP’s definition) without a single violation of our discharge limits to the Schuylkill River. Our summer requirements are much more stringent than our winter limits. This is probably the first summer with such positive results in more than ten years.

2) Work has begun on repairs to the collapsed stone retaining wall at the Pagoda. Summit Stone Masonry from Hamburg will be completing the repairs in cooperation with Public Works Property Maintenance staff.